Malatya’s 3rd High Criminal Court will continue hearing witnesses in the Zirve Publication case, in which three Protestants were killed for supposedly doing missionary work.
The trial’s next case will be tomorrow (August 21). The court had decided in the previous hearing to bring witnesses Varol Bülent Aral, Mehmet Uludağ and Hüseyin Yelki to the court by force if necessary.
Witnesses will be heard and the accused will present an additional defense
The court made the necessary preparations to bring in witnesses Abdullah Mahmut Kudaş, Turna Işıklı, Mesut Taşdelen, Muammer Özdemir, who were not called in the previous hearing.
It is expected that Emre Günaydın, Salih Gürler, Cuma Özdemir, Hamit Çeker and Abuzer Yıldırım, who have been in the Malatya E Type Prison for the past sixteen months, will be in the court as well.
The court, which had granted the arrested suspects and their lawyers until tomorrow to prepare their additional defense, will also hear Angus William Reid in compliance with the demand made by the lawyers of the suspects.
The court listened to the person who recommended murdered Aydın to Günaydın
When the five arrestees, who are on trial for murdering Necati Aydın, Uğur Yüksel and German citizen Tilman Ekkehart Geske and facing total of three life sentences each, were asked what they had thought about the additional indictment’s “qualified plunder” accusation, they had repeated their previous statements and claimed that they had not committed any crime.
Later the court had listened to Metin Doğan, one of the twelve witnesses, who have sent many petitions to the prosecutors from the Elbistan E Type Prison, where he is at the moment, stating that Emre Günaydın was used.
Important explanations from Metin Doğan
Doğan said the following in his statement: “I am very close friends with Emre. We were together in the Ideal Hearths (Ülkü Ocakları). Emre was into Tae kwon do and I was into kick boxing. He is lying. He knows me. Before Emre was not involved in this, I was already involved. I grew up in the Ideal Hearths.” Saying he knows a lot about the incident, Doğan added that Malatya Ideal Hearths President Burhan Coşkun had called him to the Nationalist Movement Party’s (MHP) provincial headquarters in August 2005 and here he had seen Coşkun with MHP’s provincial head Mehmet Ekici, former MHP deputy Namık Hakan Durhan and 50-55 year old Hikmet Çelik, who introduced himself as a Major General .
“We used to talk about Zirve Publication’s giving out Bibles and deceiving the young people. We used to discuss how we would prevent this. Burhan Coşkun and this person called Namık had said that they had broken Zirve Publications’s pencil [meaning they had signed their death warrant].”
“I tried to stop him”
Doğan said that when he was in jail for something else a guardian had told him that Emre Günaydın was going to do his job. Upon hearing this, Doğan claims, he tried to stop Günaydın.
Doğan said that he knew Taner Çelik as Oral Çelik’s relative and added that he used to come to the Hearth often. (EÖ/EZÖ)
